When your Sun is exactly opposite the Galactic Center, like Salman Rushdie’s, you’re bound to be in a league of heavy-hitters. Like, for instance, Paul McCartney, whose Sun is only nine minutes of arch from Rushdie’s. But add the Moon there, with Uranus rising ahead of it, and you’ve got someone who is challenging — and dangerously challenged by — the very heart of spiritual beliefs, not just singing about them. He’s treading on cosmic ground, no matter what he does, and some people (and not just the Ayatollah Khomeini) have gotten very upset about what he has to say.

Perhaps that’s because he’s totally self-sufficient (typical of a bowl chart) and he doesn’t have a problem taking a swing at ingrained beliefs (the bowl is led by aggressive Mars). And Chiron fans might say that with Chiron right on his Descendant both his friends and enemies are likely to be looking to inflict wounds on him, even as he tries to resolve and heal spiritual differences himself.

Although a gifted and prolific writer of “magical realism” for years, it was 1988’s Satanic Verses that rocketed him to controversial fame as Jupiter transited his Ascendant, and by February 14, 1989 a fatwa death sentence had been put out on him by Khomeini, just as his Sun progressed to natal Saturn and Saturn progressed to natal Pluto, causing him to live under constant threat, often in hiding, ever since. So, anyone who thinks Gemini is a lightweight sign need only look to this double-up opposite the Galactic Center to see that there are a lot of heavy-hitting fireworks in that sign, even in a chart like Rushdie’s that doesn’t really feature earth (that barely 0 Taurus Ascendant might be earlier, indeed likely in Aries).

Current events: After passing into a progressed New Moon phase, marked by his receiving a knighthood, Jupiter transits his Midheaven this year, keeping the author’s words in the public eye, especially in Britain where he has been a strong critic of both Bush’s policies and of fundamentalist Islam. This truth-seeker has never been afraid of death — he was born with the full heat of the Galaxy staring him in the face.